A DIGITAL PHOTO ALBUM WITH SPEED, SIMPLICITY

John MoranTHE HARTFORD COURANT

If you're looking for a simple digital photo album that will display pictures easily and with flair, Callisto Corp.'s PhotoParade software may be for you.

PhotoParade offers users a variety of built-in themes that enable quick construction of digital slide shows. Special effects include animation, musical accompaniment, captions and titles, even personal narration of the show.

Novices will appreciate the speed and simplicity of using PhotoParade. Slideshows can be assembled in minutes, and the results can be eye-catching. But more experienced computer users will find PhotoParade a little too simple and limited.

Image-editing tools are restricted, as are the number of slide-show themes available in the software. At the low end, PhotoParade Standard ($19.99) comes with a mere four slide-show themes. Even casual photographers are likely to tire of that selection quickly. For $10 more, you can buy PhotoParade Premium, which comes with nine themes.

PhotoParade Super seems to offer much more at $39.99, but its 41 themes include such narrow specialties as "Wedding Album," "Newborn" and "Graduation."

PhotoParade permits slide-show sharing via e-mail and floppy disks. But astoundingly, the software has no built-in support for CD-ROM burning. Given the prevalence of CD-ROM drives and the size of digital images, lack of support for recordable CD-ROMs is a large oversight.

On the whole, PhotoParade is a good entry-level program for people who have recently acquired a digital camera or who have begun scanning snapshots. Some will also appreciate its cross-platform support; PhotoParade runs on both Macintosh and Windows computers. But those who plan to display many photos and share them regularly would do better to consider more robust alternatives.